In the warehouse and shipping industries, motorized forklifts are the principal means of lifting, stacking, moving, and retrieving heavy loads. In large warehouses and similar facilities a large proportion of these loads are placed and stored on pallets. The pallets are then arranged on high vertical storage racks. This system of storage is not conducive to visually identifying and retrieving specific goods or pallets, especially without moving the pallets closer to or onto the ground. For example, illegible or lost label information, poor lighting, visual obstructions, and human error make visual inspection/identification of pallets and other stored materials unreliable and impractical. The fact that there is not a uniform place for labeling pallets further complicates the process of identifying, tracking, and retrieving goods. For instance, labels are often placed in a spot that is not scannable once a pallet is in the forks because the load rest often blocks the label. On larger pallets, the label may be placed higher on the stack of goods so that the load rest will not obstruct the label. However, once that layer of product is removed from the pallet, the information, which pertains to the remainder of the pallet, is lost.
Other labeling arrangements require the forklift operator to first turn the forklift at a right angle to the pallet to access the label, after which the forklift must be redirected in order to engage the load and take it to its destination. In other circumstances, the operator must dismount his lift to use a hand scanner or other device to identify the goods. Because labels cannot be read before bringing the pallet to the ground, there is no way of knowing whether the wrong pallet was retrieved until the label is read by hand.
Finally, once a pallet has been placed in a particular location on the storage racks its location must be confirmed. However, high level locations, such as the 7th level storage rack and higher, are impractical to scan because most handheld scanners cannot scan that high. In other words, it is difficult to know the exact location (i.e. the exact slot) of materials placed in high level racks for storage. Instead of scanning the labels on high level storage racks, the labels on low level materials stored on the 1st or 2nd level slots are scanned to confirm the higher level put-aways. For example, the limitations of common scanning devices require that a pallet that is actually put away in a 6th, 7th, or 8th level slot is likely confirmed as being stored in a lower level slot. Thus, it is easy to see how this system generates errors and inventory problems.
Currently, when a pallet is pulled from the storage racks, it is taken down without any confirmation that the pallet is in fact the correct one for removal. Instead the pallet is picked up, pulled in, and then dropped to a height where the label is visible or scannable. If the label is not visible the operator must extend his forks, drop the pallet to the ground, back-up out of the pallet until the label is visible, scan the label and confirm its destination. If the wrong pallet was removed, it must be returned and the selection process must be repeated until the correct pallet is located.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a system for material handling vehicles that would allow an operator to detect, identify, retrieve, and relocate goods with greater precision, accuracy, and efficiency.